This thesis analyses the process of construction of linguistic meaning from a diachronic perspective. The analysis is based on the theories of intertextuality and social construction and applies a corpus analysis of collocations and paraphrases of key notions discussed in Darwin’s correspondence. In particular, the focus of the analysis is on the terms species and varieties with the aim to observe how the meanings of these terms are formed in a process of social negotiation. The thesis analyses the difference in the meanings of these terms, but also focuses on the diachronic dimension of their use in the correspondence, which allows for the observation of how different interpretations of meanings emerge in discourse. Thus far, diachronic studies in the field of corpus linguistics focused on comparing different historical corpora rather than observing the diachronic change of the immediate contextual environment of particular terms. The results presented in this thesis show that the meanings of terms are not only formed of different interpretations in discourse, but that these interpretations can be specific to particular temporal spans in discourse
